1996 US Presidential Election

[Patine]

Since this election doesn't seem to exist in scenario form, I'll take a crack at it. This is my first P4E+P scenario, so I may need some help.

Democratic Candidates will be:

-Bill Clinton (far ahead in every state in the primary)

-Lyndon LaRouche

-Bob Casey (default off)

Republican Candidates will be:

Turned on by default-

-Lamar Alexander

-Pat Buchanon

-Bob Dole

-Robert K Dornan

-Steve Forbes

-Phil Gramm

-Alan Keyes

-Dick Luger

-Dan Quayle

-Arlan Spector

-Morry Taylor

-Pete Wilson

Turned off by default-

-Howard Baker

-James Baker

-William Bennett

-George W Bush

-Dick Cheney

-Pete DuPont

-John Engler

-Newt Gingrich

-Thomas Kean

-Jack Kemp

-Lynn Morley Martin

-Oliver North

-Colin Powell

-Donald Rumsfeld

-Tommy Thompson

-William Weld

-Christine Todd Whitman

Some of the candidates who are default off may make things tougher for the Dems if turned on.

I still need to research regional percentages and a lot of the issues (taxes were a big one I know).

Does anyone know who, if any, were the third-party or indy candidates.

I will need some help like I said, so please post if you have any input (and I can take constructive criticism).

[MatthewBreuer]

ROSS PEROT.

You probably have far too many Republican candidates in this election.

[Kanamit]

Perot was the main third-party challenge, garnering around 8 percent of the vote.

Edit: MatthewBreuer beat me to it.

[Abe Lincoln]

Ya, you can't leave him out. FYI: He founded the Reform Party for the 1996 election.

[Patine]

Yes, we'll certainly need Perot. As well I see Nader (Green), Harry Browne (Libertarian), and Howard Philips (Constitution) also ran. I thought of cutting the 'default off' candidates to just Powell, Bush, Rumsfeld, and Cheney, the big four Republicans hoped would join.

[Abe Lincoln]

It might be fun to see if W could have gotten in a term earlier.

[ktitus]

I'm glad someones attempting a 1996 scenario

I cannot wait to see how this turns out!

[Patine]

Okay, begun some work on Step One. Does anyone know when the debates were? My initial source doesn't even mention them, except to mention Perot was excluded from them and sued.

[ElectricMonk]

-Dan Quayle

Didn't run, should be off

-Pete DuPont

Did run, should be on.

-Lynn Morley Martin

-Oliver North

-Tommy Thompson

-Christine Todd Whitman

-Thomas Kean

-John Engler

-Howard Baker

-James Baker

-William Bennett

-George W Bush

-Morry Taylor

-Robert K Dornan

All of the above are too minor, and/or didn't consider running full stop. Kill them all. Your goal should be to cover the top candidates, as well as a couple of the highest profile who didn't run:

ON:

-Bob Dole (no. 1 slot)

-Pat Buchanon (no 3. slot)

-Steve Forbes (no. 5 slot)

-Phil Gramm (no. 6 slot)

-Lamar Alexander (no. 7 slot)

-Pete Wilson (no. 8 slot)

-Alan Keyes (no. 11 slot)

-Pete DuPont (no. 12 slot)

-Arlan Spector (no. 13 slot)

OFF:

-Colin Powell (no. 2 slot)

-Newt Gingrich (no. 4 slot)

-Dan Quayle (no. 9 slot)

-William Weld (no. 10 slot)

Even 12 is a lot, but hey there's no real Democratic race so might as well have fun.

Honestly? I wouldn't even bother with a Democratic race. However instead of:

Democratic Candidates will be:

-Bill Clinton (far ahead in every state in the primary)

-Lyndon LaRouche

-Bob Casey (default off)

Why not go big? Toss in Dick Gephardt, Chris Dodd, some other big Democrats… all turned off of course. I doubt a primary challenge against Clinton made sense, but perhaps a crazy liberal would mount one (a la Kennedy vs. Carter, 1980).

Resources:

My 1996 thread on the board, which covers delegates/dates for the 1996 primaries.

Polling data:

http://www.robertniles.com/stats/margin.shtml

Check out the following story that moved in the summer of 1996 on a major news wire:

WASHINGTON (Reuter) - President Clinton, hit by bad publicity recently over FBI files and a derogatory book, has slipped against Bob Dole in a new poll released Monday but still maintains a 15 percentage point lead.

The CNN/USA Today/Gallup poll taken June 27-30 of 818 registered voters showed Clinton would beat his Republican challenger if the election were held now, 54 to 39 percent, with seven percent undecided. The poll had a margin of error of plus or minus four percentage points.

A similar poll June 18-19 had Clinton 57 to 38 percent over Dole.

http://colorado.mediamatters.org/items/200802130001

Dole led Clinton in seven of the CNN polls. In the poll taken February 3-5, 1995, Dole led 51 percent to 45 percent (the rest had no opinion or responded "neither" or "depends"); April 17-19, 1995, Dole led 49 percent to 48 percent; June 5-6, 1995, Dole led 51 percent to 46 percent; July 7-9, 1995, Dole led 48 percent to 47 percent; August 4-7, 1995, Dole led 48 percent to 46 percent; January 5-7, 1996, Dole led 49 percent to 46 percent; and January 12-15, 1996, Dole led 49 percent to 48 percent.

Similarly, a nationwide CBS/New York Times poll conducted in February 1995 and reported by The National Journal Group's Hotline blog (accessed through the Nexis database) showed Dole leading Clinton 48 percent to 42 percent.

http://www-cgi.cnn.com/ALLPOLITICS/1996/po...nn.time/101196/

http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html...755C0A960958260

Bob Dole's numerous recent visits to New Jersey have not done much to boost his popularity in the state: the probable Republican presidential nominee trails Bill Clinton by 19 points, 53 percent to 34 percent, according to a Star-Ledger/Eagleton poll released yesterday. A third of the 646 voters surveyed last week, however, said they might change their minds before the election. (The poll, with a margin of error of plus or minus four percentage points, also found that choosing Governor Whitman for a running mate would not help Mr. Dole in New Jersey: 47 percent of voters said it would make no difference to them, while 28 percent said it would actually make them more likely to vote for President Clinton.)

http://www.political.com/analysis-arc/0069.html

"President Clinton widened his lead over presumptive Republican

presidential nominee Bob Dole this month in a CNN/Time public opinion poll

released Friday. It showed Clinton ahead by 15 percentage points with 53

percent, compared with Dole's 38 percent.

Clinton's lead was greater than it was in June when he led

by only six percentage points, at 49 percent compared with Dole's 43

percent, CNN said.

When Texas billionaire Ross Perot was added to the mix,

Clinton widened his edge further over Dole to a 16 percentage

point lead.

The poll showed Clinton with 48 percent, Dole with 32

percent and Perot with 13 percent. Perot, who ran for president in 1992, has

said he would accept the presidential nomination of the Reform Party, which he

founded, if he won it in a secret ballot.

http://people-press.org/commentary/?analysisid=25

[Patine]

This is great help, Electric Monk! I appreciate the aid. I'm still playing with C4E, which I just got recently, so I'm still in the initial stages. I have some initial ideas I'll be posting up for comments regarding a few things, but right now I'm off to bed. Again, thank-you!

[ElectricMonk]

This is great help, Electric Monk! I appreciate the aid. I'm still playing with C4E, which I just got recently, so I'm still in the initial stages. I have some initial ideas I'll be posting up for comments regarding a few things, but right now I'm off to bed. Again, thank-you!

No problem. The easiest way to make a scenario is to copy another one, and then start changing things. In this case, copying 1992 makes the most sense.

[Patine]

I indeed started working from '92 (great minds think alike ). I have tentative statistics for Dole based on my research, but I'm putting them up for input (note, not every candidate will get this treatment, but Dole was the GOP frontrunner, and he has no stats in any other scenario I'm aware of):

Senator Bob Dole

Age 73

PIP's 15

Home Region Kansas

Starting Funds Uncertain (I'll need advice/research)

How Well Known Medium

How Well Established 3

EV Goal 270

Leadership 4 (he was Senate Majority Leader)

Integrity 3 (he was known for neither moral tertitude or rightness)

Experience 5 (he'd been in politics since the '50's)

Issue Familiarity (again, a long political career)

Charisma 3 (he seemed average as politicians go)

Stamina 2 (he was over 70, had a permanent war wound leading to a paralyzed arm, and actually fell off a stage when he lost his balnce during the campaign)

Debating 4 (he'd had a long career debating in Congress)

Percentages, Platform, and Crusaders need to be researched more, though advice would be helpful.

Anyone with input on this, feel free to post (or on any other issue).

[Sean]

I indeed started working from '92 (great minds think alike ). I have tentative statistics for Dole based on my research, but I'm putting them up for input (note, not every candidate will get this treatment, but Dole was the GOP frontrunner, and he has no stats in any other scenario I'm aware of):

Senator Bob Dole

Age 73

PIP's 15

Home Region Kansas

Starting Funds Uncertain (I'll need advice/research)

How Well Known Medium

How Well Established 3

EV Goal 270

Leadership 4 (he was Senate Majority Leader)

Integrity 3 (he was known for neither moral tertitude or rightness)

Experience 5 (he'd been in politics since the '50's)

Issue Familiarity (again, a long political career)

Charisma 3 (he seemed average as politicians go)

Stamina 2 (he was over 70, had a permanent war wound leading to a paralyzed arm, and actually fell off a stage when he lost his balnce during the campaign)

Debating 4 (he'd had a long career debating in Congress)

Percentages, Platform, and Crusaders need to be researched more, though advice would be helpful.

Anyone with input on this, feel free to post (or on any other issue).

I'd say that he's about a 4 in how well known. He'd been the vice presidential nominee in 1976, and had established himself.

[Kauai]

Lower his expirence to 4, - 5 is almost always reserved for incumbent Presidents in scenarios. It isn't nesscarily the lenght of the career, - but the type of expirence.

Dole Crusaders

Elizabeth H. Dole - Power 2 - 0 pip

Barry Goldwater - Power 3 - 2 pip

George W. Bush - Power 2 - 1 pip

[ElectricMonk]

Senator Bob Dole

Starting Funds Uncertain (I'll need advice/research)

He had 24 million to Clinton's 26 million in the fall of 1995 (Source: The Choice by Bob Woodward).

Note however Clinton was running a very large and close to illegal series of advertisements through the DNC to boost his general election numbers starting in the summer of 1995 and continuing into the spring of 1996 at least. Those ads were paid for with "soft" money and did not come from his general election fund.

The RNC did not match them, and Dole was too busy running out of money (less than 5 million by the end of March) to counter himself.

Dole Crusaders

Elizabeth H. Dole - Power 2 - 0 pip

Barry Goldwater - Power 3 - 2 pip

George W. Bush - Power 2 - 1 pip

Dole sure, but Goldwater? He's pretty darn old at that point. And George Bush was snubbed by Gore, and then basically bought off for his endorsement (Bush wanted the same discount rate California and New York got for Medicare, worth about a billion to Texas and Dole wrote him a letter promising to look at it).

Off-hand Dole really didn't have a lot of Crusader-analogues in the real world, just some decent endorsements that didn't matter in the end (Governor of New Hampshire).

[Patine]

This makes it a lot easier, actually. How should I represent the soft money in Clinton's campaign, though? Just count it as standard funds, and not judge it's ethics from a game standpoint? I think the Chinese contributions, though, should be a news event attacking his Integrity.

[Sum1]

I read an article a few days back that said that McCain campaigned for Dole in the general election (though he endorsed someone else in the primary), so perhaps McCain could be a crusader for Dole.

[ElectricMonk]

This makes it a lot easier, actually. How should I represent the soft money in Clinton's campaign, though? Just count it as standard funds, and not judge it's ethics from a game standpoint? I think the Chinese contributions, though, should be a news event attacking his Integrity.

The way I usually represent the DNC is an endorser, with x million dollars but I suppose just giving it to Clinton works (President Forever really does need some the detail Congress Forever is supposed to include).

Soft Money '96 details.

[Patine]

I think McCain as a Dole crusader is certainly worth considering. Goldwater likely was too old, and I am considering making George W Bush just an endorser as the Governor of Texas (which is all he was in the election), maybe (though only tentatively) a Veep candidate choice as well for the GOP.

As for soft money and the DNC endorsement, as Clinton only had token opposition, he likely should just get the funds flat out. That begs the question of Gephardt, Dodd, and possible others if I have them at default 'off' and then they're turned on.

[ElectricMonk]

I am considering making George W Bush just an endorser as the Governor of Texas (which is all he was in the election), maybe (though only tentatively) a Veep candidate choice as well for the GOP.

As for soft money and the DNC endorsement, as Clinton only had token opposition, he likely should just get the funds flat out. That begs the question of Gephardt, Dodd, and possible others if I have them at default 'off' and then they're turned on.

I'm reasonably sure Bush wasn't considered as a VP choice that year. It's only been four years since Bush 41, he's only been Governor two years, and Clinton isn't going to win Texas.

The DNC spent most of the money in favour of Clinton, and since Clinton controlled the DNC it wouldn't change even if somebody mounted a primary challenge. Yeah, just give Clinton the extra cash in the primaries.

[Patine]

Quite well into candidates at this point. I've got all the Dems I'm having, more than half of the GOP, and the Reform and Green candidates (don't know whether or not to bother with the Libertarian and Constitution or not, am NOT going to do the Socialist or Queer Nation, even though they actually did run). The Political Units (with perhaps somewhat increased population) can be used intact from '92, and many of the issues seem the same or similar (though possibly with slightly different positions) as '92 as well. I still need to research beginning primary percentages for candidates (including extrapolating 'default off' candidates) and party percentages for the GE. Anyone know any good sources? Three events come to mind: the Chinese endorsement scandal to Clinton, the monastary endorsement to Clinton, and Dole falling off a stage while campaigning, bringing his age up as an issue.

[VoteGOP]

Do atleast the Libertarians. They're a good space bar party. THey take votes form both sides.

[Patine]

Okay, I'm done the parties (except for platform and starting %'s) and all the candidates (except for issues and starting %'s). I plan to tackle issues next, but that should be easy, given similar issues from '92. Then I can do party platforms and candidate issues. I'm also going to search for the dates of Republican, Presidential, and Vice-Presidential debates (I would imagine there were no Democratic debates, unless Billy took up talking to himself on TV ).

[Patine]

I need help. I've set Clinton to a huge lead in the Dems primary (initial figures on possible Gephardt and Dodd figures if they're turned on need to be figured by possible regional support; LaRouche, the only historical challenger begins with 1 or 2% in three states, with only 20% of those being committed), and the Republicans need to wait till I find a reliable sorce of beginning primary polls (as well as extrapolating for the four off candidates). That's fine for now. The problem is, I was going to set each third-party primaries to 100% in each state for their leader, like I've seen in most other scenarios. So, I started with the Greens. I set each states primary for the Green Gathering (convention), which I believe is what they do for these parties in other scenarios, as they all happen at once, and set 1 delgate for each state until I can find the number from each (as well as every state on the ballot for the GE till I can find a list of the 10 that weren't on the ballot). Then I set Nader to 100% in each state, with 90% committed and 10% leaning. I then saved and tested in P4E+P. It showed Nader as having 0% in each state, 0% undecided, and no accounting as to who had the entirety of the Green vote, as their was no one else! Can someone tell me what I'm doing wrong?

[Patine]

I've looked over the '92 issues, and most would be similar to what was seen in '96 (especially Abortion, AIDS, Economy, Personal Tax and Reforming Congress, all of which would start High or Very High), but maybe with somewhat different positions to represent Presidential and Congressional work on them during Clinton's first term. The exceptions, however, are I'd replace Bosnia and Somalia with Kosovo (I believe the Yugoslavian conflict was on that stage by '96; correct me if I'm wrong), Free Trade with NAFTA, and Forces in Europe with Middle East Peace. Any ideas or suggestions here?